The CATV business is evolving from merely broadcasting and supporting a number of channels to the targeting and supply of specific services geared to an individual user or user cluster during a given subscription period. In order to provide broadband type services, e.g., to enable Internet access services, service providers in the cable industry have expressed their desire to deliver a wavelength's worth of baseband digital information from a network's core to its edge using optical technology. It is highly impractical, however, to implement a system that could assign an individual wavelength to each of a large number of users being served by a secondary hub. That is, practicality dictates the use of a more passive type of system, e.g., a passive optical network (PON).
Many PONs utilize a tree topology where a passive optical splitter/merger provides broadcasting in the downstream direction and merging in the upstream direction. As thought of in a traditional sense, PONs are pure broadcast networks that are static in nature. That is, in order to change services to a customer or customer group, a physical change, for example, a change in the network configuration or equipment would need to take place. Even the so-called lamda-PONs which use filters to send certain wavelengths to different places in the network are still considered static. Such networks are not dynamically configurable, in that a service call is required in order to make an alteration to the network in order to change services.
Because of the static nature of PONs, a need exists to quickly and efficiently alter the configuration of a broadband optical network in order to provide a number of differing CATV services based on customer needs.